by Traci Chee
PAST AND PRESENT
As with all historical events, the incarceration did not happen in isolation. Prior to the attack on Pearl Harbor, anti-Asian sentiment in North America had been building for decades, and the unjust, often brutal treatment of nonwhite people has profound and extensive roots in U.S. history. During World War II, the mass incarceration affected over one hundred thousand Japanese-Americans—more, if we consider the people of Japanese ancestry who were deported from their homes in Latin America and imprisoned in camps in the United States. The effects of these events have been both deep and widespread, not only for those who lived them, but also for later generations of Japanese-Americans, like myself, and other communities of people of color.
Although We Are Not Free is both history and fiction, I believe it would be a mistake to relegate the racism against and mass incarceration of Japanese-Americans in the 1940s to some bygone era, with no relevance to current events. During my research, the more I have learned about our history, the more I have come to realize that we are part of an ongoing pattern of injustices that have affected and are still affecting millions of people of color on this continent. I don’t think it’s fair or right for me to compare the various ways minority groups have been and are being abused, oppressed, and denied their human rights in this country, but when I look around, I cannot help but feel that history is repeating itself in new and sometimes more horrific ways.
History is not dead. We have not moved on. Like Minnow and many of my other characters, I love this country because it is my home, and my parents’ home, and my grandparents’ home, and because I was raised to believe in the opportunity and equality America promises, but this does not prevent me from seeing its problems, seeing all the ways it has failed its people again and again. Rather, I’d like to think that it’s because I love this country that I am here, working in the ways that I can toward making it a better, more just, more egalitarian place for everyone—a place that, one day, I hope can truly live up to its promises.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Among other things, I think We Are Not Free is a book about community—people who come together, even across great distances—and it is a community who brought this book into the world. I am thankful for the assistance, guidance, encouragement, and efforts of more people than I could ever hope to name in these pages. Thank you, always, thank you.
Thank you to my agent, Barbara Poelle, for knowing this was the book of my heart long before I was brave enough to admit it, and for championing it with such ferocity and care. Further gratitude to everyone at IGLA—I am so humbled to be counted as one of your authors.
Thank you to my editor, Catherine Onder, for believing in each of these characters and all of them together. Under your guidance, they’ve gotten the opportunity to become who they were always meant to be, and I’m forever thankful. My admiration and gratitude to the whole team at Houghton Mifflin Harcourt for bringing this book into the world: Gabby Abbate, Mary Magrisso, Mary Hurley, Tara Shanahan, Amanda Acevedo, Margaret Rosewitz, Alix Redmond, Ellen Fast, and Erika West. With additional thanks to Jessica Handelman, John Lee, and David Field/Caterpillar Media, who created this extraordinary cover; Mary Claire Cruz, who laid out the interior of this book with such great care; and Julia Kuo, who brought Minnow’s sketches to life.
Thank you to my readers, Diane Glazman, Samira Ahmed, Tara Sim, Laura Edgar, Averill Elisa Frankes, Mark Oshiro, Masa Motohashi (and James Brandon, who set in motion the events that would put us in contact), Heidi Heilig, Patrice Caldwell, Jane Beckwith, and Robert Miller. Thanks also to Lucas Sakata for the translation and the crash course in late Meiji–era rhetoric. Thanks to David Harper (and Jesse Dizard, who introduced us) for speaking with me about the intersections between the Poston camps and the Colorado River Indian Tribes, and to Angela Sutton for providing a tour of Tule Lake on such short notice.
Thanks to my friends for the encouragement and fellowship, including (but never limited to) Stacey Lee, Parker Peevyhouse, Jessica Cluess, Evangeline Crittenden, Emily Skrutskie, and Christian McKay Heidicker.
To my family—more love and gratitude than I could ever hope to convey. This book is from you, for you. Special thanks to Mary S. Uchiyama, Aiji Uchiyama, Osuye Okano, Sachiko Iwata, and Mutsuo Kitagawa for sharing your stories with me, and to Kojiro F. Kawaguchi for putting yours on CD. Thanks to my grandfather, Peter Kitagawa, for writing so many letters to my grandmother, and thanks to my grandmother, Margaret Kitagawa, for keeping them all those years. Thanks to Matt Kitagawa for the grade-school heritage report, and to Gordon Kitagawa for digging it out of storage. Thanks to Don Aoki for the Hamada family tree. Thanks to Chris Iwata for chatting with me about the army . . . and for not noticing when I borrowed my first research book from your study. None of this would have been possible without Pauline Kitagawa and Kats Kitagawa—thank you for everything: arranging interviews; driving thousands of miles across literal deserts; letting me pick through Grandma’s old steamer trunks; the trips to Topaz, Manzanar, and Tule Lake; and every time I texted you to check a fact about cooking, slang, J-town, katakana, or our family history. You have been an integral part of this journey, and I will never forget it. As ever, thanks to Cole for your continued love and support.
Finally, thank you, reader. Thank you for seeing this story and not turning away. It happened. It happened to my family. It has happened, in other forms and with other faces, to other communities and other individuals all over the world. It is happening right now, and it will happen again. We cannot allow it to happen again. Love and fortitude to you all.
FURTHER READING
Densho: The Japanese American Legacy Project. (www.densho.org; accessed Aug. 7, 2019)
Houston, Jeanne Wakatsuki. Farewell to Manzanar. New York: Random House Children’s Books, 2012.
National JACL Power of Words II Committee. “Power of Words.” Japanese American Citizens League. 2013. (jacl.org/education/power-of-words; accessed Aug. 6, 2019)
Okada, John. No-No Boy. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2014.
Okubo, Miné. Citizen 13660. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2014.
Oppenheim, Joanne. Stanley Hayami, Nisei Son. New York: Brick Tower Press, 2008.
Tanaka, Chester. Go for Broke: A Pictorial History of the Japanese American 100th Infantry Battalion and the 442d Regimental Combat Team. Richmond, CA: Go for Broke, Inc., 1982.
Tule Lake Committee. Second Kinenhi: Reflections on Tule Lake. San Francisco: Tule Lake Committee, 2000.
Uchida, Yoshiko. Journey to Topaz. Berkeley, CA: Creative Arts Book Company, 1985.
IMAGE CREDITS
20: “State of California, [Civilian Exclusion Order No. 20], City of San Francisco, northeast,” April 24, 1942, by J. L. DeWitt, Lieutenant General, U.S. Army, Western Defense Command and Fourth Army. Courtesy of the San Jose State University Department of Special Collections and Archives, John M. Flaherty Collection of Japanese Internment Records.
74: “Topaz concentration camp, Utah,” October 18, 1942, by Tom Parker. Courtesy of the National Archives at College Park, 210-G-E13.
99: Topaz Times, vol. II, Extra, January 29, 1943. Courtesy of the Library of Congress, Serial and Government Publications Division.
159: “Allied Nations 2-cent 1943 issue U.S. stamp,” January 14, 1943, by the Bureau of Engraving and Printing. Courtesy of the U.S. Postal Service, National Postal Museum.
172: “Camp new arrivals,” 1943 (ddr-densho-37-2797), Densho, National Archives and Records Administration Collection. Courtesy of the National Archives and Records Administration.
243: Shoulder insignia for the 442nd Regimental Combat Team
260–61: “The Rand-McNally new library atlas map of Europe” by Rand McNally and Company. Courtesy of the Library of Congress, Geography and Map Division.
308: “Coast Ban Lifted,” Newell Star, Extra, December 19, 1944, Densho, Newell Star Collection. Courtesy of the family of Itaru and Shizuko Ina.
346: “Graffiti from
Tule Lake jail” by Kats Kitagawa. Courtesy of Kats Kitagawa.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
TRACI CHEE is a New York Times best-selling author of the YA fantasy trilogy The Reader, The Speaker, and The Storyteller. In We Are Not Free, Chee changes gears and pulls from her own family history, creating a stunning and evocative novel that resonates deeply against today’s tumultuous political backdrop. An all-around word geek, she loves book arts and art books, poetry and paper crafts, though she also dabbles at egg painting, bonsai gardening, and hosting game nights for family and friends. She lives in California with her fast dog.
Learn more at tracichee.com
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